East Antarctica is sliding sideways

[ScienceRocks]

East Antarctica is sliding sideways

East Antarctica is sliding sideways

It's official: East Antarctica is pushing West Antarctica around. Now that West Antarctica is losing weight--that is, billions of tons of ice per year--its softer mantle rock is being nudged westward by the harder mantle beneath East Antarctica.

The discovery comes from researchers led by The Ohio State University, who have recorded GPS measurements that show West Antarctic bedrock is being pushed sideways at rates up to about twelve millimeters--about half an inch--per year. This movement is important for understanding current ice loss on the continent, and predicting future ice loss.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says it gonna flood So. America...

Antarctic coastal waters 'rising faster'
1 September 2014 ~ Melting ice is fuelling sea-level rise around the coast of Antarctica, a new report in Nature Geoscience finds.

Near-shore waters went up by about 2mm per year more than the general trend for the Southern Ocean as a whole in the period between 1992 and 2011. Scientists say the melting of glaciers and the thinning of ice shelves are dumping 350 billion tonnes of additional water into the sea annually. This influx is warming and freshening the ocean, pushing up its surface. "Freshwater is less dense than salt water and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localised rise in sea level," explained Dr Craig Rye from the University of Southampton, UK, and lead author on the new journal paper.

Parts of West Antarctica are undergoing significant change

Globally, sea levels are going up, in part because of the contribution of the world's diminishing ice fields. This is well known. But the Nature Geoscience report is the first to show the direct consequences to sea surface height (SSH) around Antarctica itself. While the satellite data record indicates there has been a general upward trend in SSH in the Southern Ocean south of 50 degrees of up to 2.4mm per year, those satellites also indicate a more rapid rise in waters sitting on the continental shelf.

Mass losses

Modelling by Dr Rye's team suggests that this additional 2mm per year can be attributed almost exclusively to freshwater runoff from Antarctica, and not to some climatic oscillation that might make sea levels "breathe" up and down on decadal timescales. "We can estimate the amount of water that wind is pushing on to the continental shelf, and show with some certainty that it is very unlikely that this wind forcing is causing the sea level rise," Dr Rye told BBC News. "And because we can model the freshwater forcing, and the fact that this is so much more like what we see in the real world, we can come to the confident conclusion that the signal is driven by freshwater forcing."

Recent satellite studies have underlined the increased mass losses occurring in Antarctica. Much of this accelerated ice discharge is occurring in the continent's western sectors, particularly in the Amundsen Sea Embayment and along the Antarctic Peninsula. In contrast to land ice, the sea ice around Antarctica stands at record levels and is becoming more extensive. The growth is small and very regional in character, but nonetheless significant. Quite how the freshening of surface waters might be influencing this phenomenon is now a target for study. "That's a really interesting question which I'd like to look into with further research," Dr Rye said.

BBC News - Antarctic coastal waters rising faster

 

[Skull Pilot]

It's called plate tectonics and has been happening ever since the earth's crust was cool enough to solidify.

 

[Stephanie]

ok, so we're all going to drown now?

the earth changes all the time over years.

I think you give money to these people and they'd study two ants getting it on

 

[Stephanie]

Humm. Video at the site

SNIP:
Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

• Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
• An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
• These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated

By David Rose for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 17:04 EST, 30 August 2014 | Updated: 02:34 EST, 1 September 2014


The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
Scroll down for video

all of it here:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html#ixzz3C4V5eVuS
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

[IanC]

Over the last five years I have repeatedly pointed out that the string of active buried volcanoes in west Antarctica were having a larger impact on the ice sheets than CO2 induced warming at the surface. Does this latest study vindicate me, or am I still a 'denier'?

 

[Old Rocks]

ok, so we're all going to drown now?

the earth changes all the time over years.

I think you give money to these people and they'd study two ants getting it on

Ah, the voice of willfull ignorance.

 

[Old Rocks]

Humm. Video at the site

SNIP:
Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

• Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
• An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
• These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated

By David Rose for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 17:04 EST, 30 August 2014 | Updated: 02:34 EST, 1 September 2014


The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
Scroll down for video

all of it here:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html#ixzz3C4V5eVuS
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The ice is already at the eighth lowest on record. And all eight years have been the last eight years.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png

You might note how the ice amount goes up and down individual years, but for the whole time period on the graph, definately down.

 

[Old Rocks]

Over the last five years I have repeatedly pointed out that the string of active buried volcanoes in west Antarctica were having a larger impact on the ice sheets than CO2 induced warming at the surface. Does this latest study vindicate me, or am I still a 'denier'?

No, it does not vindicate you, because presently the Antarctic is not melting at the surface. It has warmed, but is still well below freezing most of the time. It is losing ice, and losing it by the giga-ton, from the glaciers increased push into the sea.

Climate Change Facts Antarctica Is Losing Ice Weather Underground

 

[IanC]

How exactly is CO2 causing this? Do you know how good an insulator an inch of ice is? Let alone a kilometre.

 

[Old Rocks]

Note that the water around Anarctica is quite a bit warmer than it used to be. It is warmer for the same reason that most of the ocean is warmer. Because the additional GHGs in the atmosphere is retaining more heat.

 

[Old Rocks]

Crucial West Antarctic glaciers are retreating unstoppably Nature News Comment

That warmer water is melting the ice shelves, which allows the glaciers to speed up and dump more ice into the ocean.


Several of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers have already begun a runaway meltdown, two studies suggest. The work provides some of the first detailed forecasts of how quickly glaciers are likely to disappear from a region that has long been a concern for scientists.


One paper uses modelling to find that ongoing losses at the Thwaites Glacier have permanently destabilized the ice river, which drains into West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea1. In the second study, satellite radar observations reveal that Thwaites and four neighbouring glaciers have nothing to hold them back from catastrophic collapse2, so they are more vulnerable than was previously thought.

“Ice is going to retreat from this sector for decades and centuries to come, and we can’t stop it,” says Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, and co-author of the satellite analysis

And this is just the start of what they are finding.

 

[IanC]

Ocean temperature changes measured in hundredths of a degree or geothermal heat and water lubrication added precisely to the friction point. We are all free to make our own choice as to which is more significant.

The flow of glacier ice is like a river in slow motion. It is dependent on the accumulation of snow and ice in previous decades, or longer. Fast changes simply don't happen in Antarctica.

 

[jc456]

Note that the water around Anarctica is quite a bit warmer than it used to be. It is warmer for the same reason that most of the ocean is warmer. Because the additional GHGs in the atmosphere is retaining more heat.

Yeah and that's why the science boot made it to its destination this year right? Oh wait, they got stuck in ice, six feet of ice in that warm antarctic water. Yeah right, you don't know crap about what you post.You are just a parrott. Polly got warm water? Nope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[IanC]

http://i35.tinypic.com/s3djds.jpg

I dont see where the Southern Ocean is 'quite a bit warmer than it used to be'.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Over the last five years I have repeatedly pointed out that the string of active buried volcanoes in west Antarctica were having a larger impact on the ice sheets than CO2 induced warming at the surface. Does this latest study vindicate me, or am I still a 'denier'?

...er, you mean the volcanoes that were activated because of manmade global warming?

 

[jc456]

http://i35.tinypic.com/s3djds.jpg

I dont see where the Southern Ocean is 'quite a bit warmer than it used to be'.

Sure it is and why scientist venture out in summer months to prove the warming waters and then get stuck in six feet of ice along with the rescue ship. Deniers don't make this stuff up.